Delhi HC nixes plea against reduction of allowances to Air India pilots during Covid

The bench also noted that for it to get into the argument of violation of Article 14 of the Constitution (equality before law), the “appellants have not been able to establish that the State did not have a discernible reason for notifying the impugned Office Orders and that the State was not within its bounds of reasonableness”.

The division bench said it is refraining from setting aside the single judge’s order and dismissed the appeal moved by the Executive Pilots’ Association against the order passed on February 7, 2022. The single judge had held that the policy was for “uniform reduction in allowances which was proportional to the amount of allowances received by the employees” — the higher the allowances, greater was the reduction, the court had held.

The division bench observed that as per the material on record, Air India pilots “even after the reduction of 40% of allowances still took home a salary of about Rs 6 (lakh) to (Rs) 7 lakh”. It took “judicial notice” of the fact that many pilots across various airlines had lost their jobs, “but Air India ensured that there are no layoffs”.

“The policy of reduction in allowances has been evolved by Air India to ensure a reduction only in allowances since it is not the case of the Appellants that all pilots in Respondent Organization were flying and involved in the Vande Bharat Mission,” the division bench said.

The Vande Bharat mission was one of the world’s largest repatriation operations, in which A-I and its subsidiary, Air India Express, brought back thousands of stranded Indians from different countries during the pandemic.

Noting the material on record, the bench said the decision for “proportionate reduction of allowances across the board cannot be said to be arbitrary”. It said that since A-I was already a loss-making PSU, “a policy decision, to rationalise the allowances of its employees” was taken in consultation with the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

“It is not the pilots but every staff had to be put to a proportional cut in their allowances… The fact that a pilot even without the allowance takes home a pay package of Rs 6 (lakh) to 7 lakh as compared to many other people in the country who lost their entire livelihood during the pandemic cannot raise a grouse that they have been victims of reduction in pay and allowances,” the bench said.

The bench noted that A-I was in a cash deficit of more than Rs 250 crore, and any decision taken by the government along with the officers of A-I at the time was purely a policy decision to keep the airline afloat. The bench also remarked that courts cannot examine the relative merits of economic policies and cannot strike down a policy merely on the ground that another policy would be fairer and better.